Chapter 69

69

She is sitting cross legged in a field somewhere, anywhere really, meditating upon some aspect of her blooming reality, while a small girl flies a bright red kite off in the distance. The wind pours down from the surrounding mountains, in short but powerful bursts, pulling the kite’s string tighter and tighter until a fray begins to develop halfway down the line. In a mere breath of a moment the string snaps and the kite is stolen by the mountain air. Jamie runs over to her mother and falls sobbingly into her lap. The meditator retains her focus, allowing the little girl to deal with this small tragedy in her own unique way. Once the sobbing resides, Jamie opens her eyes and begins to stroke her daughter’s rested head. Another gust blows down from the peaks, and I feel myself begin to levitate.

Without their knowledge, the wind begins to steal me away from the two women below. I feel myself trying to root into the earth, desperately forcing weight into my feet, hoping to deny this undeniable force from carrying me away. But my tether frayed and snapped long ago. I must succumb to the wind around me. I have no other choice.

I am carried up over the mountains and down into the valley, across open fields and into the city. I can smell the sulfur in the air, I can taste the grit of the city below as it fades into a grid of streets and sprawling urban development. The cacophony of air conditioners and automobiles creates its own brand of white noise, which fades into silence as I am whisked across the continent, over the Atlantic, all the while gaining altitude. Higher and higher, up above the clouds and through the Earth’s atmosphere, I am carried into orbit. I am but another piece of matter relegated to infinity. And it is that notion begins to stir a panic deep within me.

Forcefully, I snap awake, gather my breath and recalculate my surroundings. I am still here, in our newly built home, with Jamie sleeping peacefully beside me. Rolling over, I clasp her face in my hands, just to reassure myself that she is indeed a reality I can depend on. I let my lips graze her cheek, her ears, her neck. I kiss her firmly on the lips. I can taste their beauty, their soft pillowy perfection.

She stirs. She wakes. I encourage her. I kiss her again. With even more conviction. She lifts her lids. Her brown eyes finding recognition in mine.

“Hi baby,” she says in a half-awake whispery slip of breath. “I was having the strangest dream. You were flying away like a kite who’d broken his string.”

I remain silent as her lids grow heavy again, her breath becomes metered, and she drifts back into sleep. It’s five in the morning, and the sun is slowly beginning to poke it’s head up over the mountains. Patiently, I await the coming dawn.

Chapter 68

68

Inadequate.
Incompetent.
Impotent.
A calculated cut across my arm.
I can’t feel anything anymore.

I’ve locked the door for the final time, settled myself in front of my typewriter. The sound of the flames engulf the house around me. I’m a character in a burning book who has finally discovered that the end of his novel is just like the beginning. Cyclical, bound by a hardened outer shell, there is no need to escape the flames. Everything in between can be read out of order, a hodgepodge collection of memories that are creeping in under the door. They’re suffocating. But of course they are. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

A .44 across my lap.
A .44 complete with shells.
I am leaving it you.
I am leaving this.
Maybe you’ll miss me.

Coughing. Choking. Lungs breathing in the billowing smoke. I can see the kitchen from here, succumbing to the heat. The clock, remember the clock? I was fighting...with you...with myself...with the wind surrounding me. It matters not which. I took this same gun. The gun across my lap. And put a bullet into the midnight hour. The flames are tickling at it’s toes. Soon both hands will melt together. But I wasn’t there to see it.

It was quick.
A thought struck me.
Like an arctic breeze.
That 50 years was simply too long.
To be over in an instant.

And I laid there for days. My body waiting for your arrival. I thought you might come back, I thought you’d need to see if I was ok. Charred from the fire, they had a hard time recognizing me from the pieces of smoldering timber lying around me. The gunshot took off the back of my head. And the flames engulfed me. I wish you would have called.

But I wouldn’t have answered.
You could have called.
And I couldn’t have answered.
I died so very long ago.
When suddenly I stopped answering.

These words seem so hollow and meaningless now that everything lies in ruin around me. Hollow and meaningless as the surrounding air grows silent. Hollow and meaningless as I become smaller, and smaller, my memory fading, ashes of my former self being carried away by the wind. Hollow and meaningless because I am no longer here, or there, or anywhere for that matter. Hollow and meaningless until I am left with only one sentence...one sentence that summarizes my time here with you. One sentence that is neither hollow or meaningless:

Within you, I had found a home.

And those words will linger in the air long after the wind blows this all away.